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Tag: Azure

A while back I started reading the Microsoft Patterns and Practices eBook “Developing applications for the cloud, on the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform.” Now I finally got around writing down some of my thoughts on this book.

When I started reading the book my first thought was “strange”, when I got deeper into the book, my thought was “strange” , when I finished the book, my thought was “strange but informative”

The initial “strange” was from the fact that it is an eBook you can buy but you can also read it completely free online. Since even the pdf can be downloaded for free I don’t really see why you would buy the eBook.

The second “strange” was because I could not find a clear audience for the book. It goes from high level functional to low level development to low level infrastructure to business case. Every audience can get value out of the book and gain initial understanding but also every audience will skip parts just because they won’t find it interesting,

In the end the missing clear audience and free online content remained but I also gained a lot of knowledge from the book. With a fun writing style that is combined with low level technical detail ( might need some changes since Azure is evolving rapidly) it gave me some new unique insights on how to think and reason about cloud applications.

In the end I highly recommend reading the free online version of this book. With the technical details for which you have to wonder if they still hold true and the parts that you probably want to skip I think it is just not worth the money.

This review is done as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program. O’Reilly provided the book but does not make any judgment on the content of the review.